Arguing that a Pentagon order banning four journalists from covering military commissions at Guantanamo Bay was illegal and unconstitutional, The Miami Herald and two Canadian news outlets appealed on Wednesday.

While covering a hearing last week to determine the admissibility of confessions made by Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, four journalists from The Herald, which is owned by McClatchy, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and Can-West Newspapers of Canada printed the name of a witness who had been identified at the hearing as “Interrogator No. 1.” The witness, Joshua Claus, had been convicted by a U.S. military jury of detainee abuse in 2005 and sentenced to five months in prison. His role as Khadr’s interrogator had been known since 2008, when it was first revealed by a judge at Guantanamo. He later gave an on-the-record interview to the Toronto Star.

“The public is deprived of the very skilled reporting of journalists who have been covering this story for a long time,” she said.

A story from McClatchy Newspapers, which owns the Miami Herald, said Rosenberg has covered every military commission hearing at Guantanamo Bay, with the exception of one week, since the proceedings began in 2004.

I wonder how this will affect the friends and families of those serving, there is not a mention of them in this article. Though I do suspect that access to these sites are being denied because they don’t want the soldiers to wake up to the obvious fact that they are worthless to our and others leader’s. While Social Networking Sites have their downs, like being owned by criminals; They do have their ups as well like sharing information and stories that we otherwise might not hear. -ed

The U.S. Marine Corps has banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks, effective immediately.

“These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday. “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”